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FSC professor edits published anthology

LAKELAND, Fla. (April 11, 2003) - Dr. Mary Pharr, English professor at Florida Southern College, is the editor of the recently published anthology "Fantastic Odysseys: Selected Essays from the Twenty-Second International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts" (Praeger-GPG, 2003). 

"Fantastic Odysseys" takes the metaphor of the odyssey outside the epic genre by exploring its trails within an array of other literary and dramatic forms of the fantastic. Authors studied include Borges, Millás, Kafka, Malamud, Hoffmann, Ende, Straub, King, McKillip, Tiptree, Robinson, and Clarke; films include "Them!," "The Rapture," "American Psycho," and "Fight Club." The anthology is available through Amazon.com and other booksellers. 

Howard V. Hendrix, Ph.D., science fiction author and educator at California State University, endorses the anthology, stating, "'Fantastic Odysseys,' like the odyssey itself, is a tour de force in both senses: an impressive feat and a journey that must be taken.... Highly recommended." 

Pharr has been with the college for over sixteen years. She teaches classes ranging from Romanticism to film to the epic. She has served as a member of the Speakers Bureau for the Florida Humanities Council and as an officer in the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. The author of both journal articles and book chapters in the field of fantastic fiction and film, she has also co-edited, with Leonard G. Heldreth, the anthology "The Blood Is the Life: Vampires in Literature" (Bowling Green State Univ. Press, 1999).

About Florida Southern College
Florida Southern is a four-year, private, co-educational liberal arts college affiliated with the United Methodist Church. The college offers more than 40 undergraduate majors and a master of business administration degree accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Located in Lakeland, Fla., the college is home to the largest, single-site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture in the world. 

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